Persona - A concept email client

by basil • 15 years ago

162 116 15 years ago

karolist• 15 years ago

Looks cool and polished. Email client space is heating up, I wonder how this will fare against sparrow.

By the way, does anyone know how the DOF effect in the video is achieved? Guess it was added during post processing in software.

xelfer• 15 years ago

I'm guessing it was filmed with a Digital SLR with a high aperture lens, something like a 50mm 1.4 or 1.8 (doesn't look shallow enough for a 1.2).

evilswan• 15 years ago

Agree, looks about 1.4 fully-open.

microtonal2• 15 years ago

Indeed, more competition is good. Apple has finally spiced up Mail.app to have a conversation view, and far better filtering.

chum4ever• 15 years ago

Did you try mail.zoho.com, The conversation view they have is interesting.

dfischer• 15 years ago

I really don't want to use desktop software anymore. Am I the only one that feels this way?

mvzink• 15 years ago

No, you seem to be with the majority. But I really don't want to use web software any more. I might be the only one, but hopefully not.

TeMPOraL3• 15 years ago

You're not the only one. I don't really like web applications too. It is irrational of me, but I really feel better about desktop, on-line software. I think I don't really trust "the Internet" and "the Cloud", and would like my computer to be usable even after the whole networking infrastructure burns down.

DasIch• 15 years ago

Web apps have their advantages but their integration into the desktop, responsiveness etc. is lacking far behind desktop applications.

Browsers fail horribly at providing a desktop alternative.

microtonal2• 15 years ago

No, I like native widgets, predictable shortcuts, and easy off-line use. Also, desktop software is easily manageable via Exposé/Mission Control.

Also, I don't like the fact that webmail providers such as GMail cannot only track my e-mail, but also my reading/browsing behavior.

angryasian• 15 years ago

just to play devils advocate

predictable shortcuts are like bookmarks, easily manageable (tabs expose for chrome) - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ackpfhlmgjdjlohhjm... your ISP is tracking, cookies are tracking, or basically its more of a hassle to minimize all tracking than to stop thinking about it.

Either way in the end it is about preference

Derbasti11• 15 years ago

Maybe we are not so much headed towards a sharp divide between desktop software and the web, but instead will see more seamless integration between the two.

You (well, some of you) are already using Gmail seamlessly as a web app, on your laptop, your mobile phone and your tablet. Each with their own unique interface, but each with the same metaphors. Same with Twitter, Facebook and a slew of other services.

I think the definition of what constitutes an 'app' is blurring. Web-apps, in-browser Chrome apps, browser add-ons, native apps, site-specific browsers, web-content inside native apps, native content inside web apps, the Chrome book, all of that has some app-ness… Some web apps don't need an internet connection any more. Some native apps are completely dependent on an internet connection. Which of these is the web app, then? It is really only that some apps are executed within the context of a browser and some are not. That says little about their web-awareness, though.

beaumartinez2• 15 years ago

In the strictest sense, a web-app is an app that runs "in any browser", accessible through a URL; a native app one that runs "in a specific operating system".

Requiring Internet access or not has nothing to do with it.

For example, an OS X native app wouldn't run in Linux (at least as easily as a Linux native app would). A web app would.

sunchild2• 15 years ago

I agree. I only use desktop email to ensure that I have a copy saved locally.

For the workgroup that I support, I give them Mailplane for Google Apps. I find that some users just can't get past the idea of having a "shortcut" on their desktop, even when on a Mac.

threepointone• 15 years ago

Sigur Ros for the soundtrack? Nicely done!

steffoz• 15 years ago

definitely interesting the distraction free sending email dialog!

kefs• 15 years ago

autoplay? :(

brown9-22• 15 years ago

I'd love to see the results of an A/B test to see how people respond to autoplaying videos. Seems like a big turn-off.

TeMPOraL3• 15 years ago

While I think that the video would use a change in voice-over (something more clear and more emotional), there was something touching that moved me near the end and made me think about people and simple, day-to-day life. Maybe it's the sountrack. Anyway, well done :).

michael_dorfman• 15 years ago

The soundtrack is "Ágætis Byrjun" by Sigur Rós-- I'm not sure how they'd feel about their stuff being used in a commercial setting.

socksy2• 15 years ago

Apparently not necessarily well: http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/media/homage-or-fromage.php

They might be wise to change the music.

jerryr• 15 years ago

Yeah, and the vocals compete with the narrative, so they might want to change it regardless.

dreww• 15 years ago

i think this is intended to be, and will always remain, vaporware.

or perhaps i misunderstand what is meant by "concept".

shimonamit2• 15 years ago

Aside question: Can anyone elaborate a little bit on the camera, lenses, and graphical effects used to produce the blur/focus effect in this video?

tincholio• 15 years ago

I don't know how they did it, but it could have been easily done with a DSLR with video capabilities and a decent fast lens. Note that the camera was mostly static, except for example when doing minute panning movements (not too smooth, so probably they didn't have the right type tripod head) towards the right and shifting focus so as to put the viewer's attention on the different icons.

shimonamit2• 15 years ago

Ah, thanks. So most if not all the smarts were in the camera, not in the post-shooting graphic polish?

socksy2• 15 years ago

I didn't spot any panning at all - just how abruptly focus had changed. However, there were quite a few jumps where panning would have been more appropriate (imo). One trick to getting smooth pans with a cheap tripod is to use a rubber band around the handle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj6fMcJ18aA

ssn• 15 years ago

Is this being developed?

I think that there are some original and interesting ideas in there.

Derbasti11• 15 years ago

They are advancing the concept of 'conversations' that Gmail introduced in an interesting direction. Basically, the second tab at the top is the Gmail conversation view. This view collects emails by topic, which makes it behave more like a threaded discussion board in a way.

The interesting part is the first tab though, the 'people' view. They seem to go for an IM-style persistent conversation log between a fixed set of people. That is quite an interesting way of looking at conversations, pushing email further from the original 'digital letter' towards shorter, more transient messages. Basically, it tries to make email behave more like a persistent IM chat.

I find it interesting how the email protocol gets pushed more and more in the background and applications implement their own interfaces on top of it. Email seems to evolve from the definite way of sending stuff over the internet towards just one other communication protocol that is more or less on equal footing with, say, Jabber, or Facebook, or maybe even Twitter.

What with Facebook integrating email into its site and Google dumping IM chat logs in your Gmail inbox, there is even some sort of cross-protocol talk. This gets even more obvious with Facebook or Google+ or Twitter sending you emails whenever you receive messages on their platform. Now if you could reply to these emails and the platform would 'do the right thing', this would actually implement email as a ubiquitous interface to all of these services.

Interesting times!

_urga3• 15 years ago

The concept screenshots have been designed using data that displays well in an IM-style conversation log, but how would it work for traditionally formatted email (e.g. Dear, regards, long signature, messy disclaimer, quoted text, html newsletters)? That is where the sender has one idea of how email should look like, and the receiver has another?

Derbasti11• 15 years ago

I would guess that just like in Gmail, quoted texts get collapsed, signatures get faded. Basically, Gmail works, too, so this is probably a solved problem.

And personally, I think the world would be a better place without disclaimers anyway, so they might as well delete them outright. But maybe that is just me.

a3_nm3• 15 years ago

Gmail did not introduce 'conversations'. Threaded email clients have been around since forever.

Derbasti11• 15 years ago

True, threading precedes conversations. But threading is not the same thing as Gmail-style conversations.

If you have a two messages that belong to one thread but that you put in two different folders, a thread-aware email client will still only show one message when you view it.

In a conversion-based email program however, there exists no such thing as an individual message. There are only whole conversations. When you view a 'single message', you always see the whole conversation regardless of the 'folder' it resides in. Basically, it always collects all the messages that belong to a thread even if you look at one single lonely message sitting in your inbox.

Persona seems to go a step further and not only collect threads into conversations, but also collect all conversations between a set of people into people-streams.

knowtheory2• 15 years ago

So... they've turned email into Facebook? Is that the idea? :P

farlington3• 15 years ago

I think it's a great idea. Don't most people you know use facebook instead of email for personal correspondence?

knowtheory2• 15 years ago

no?

For one i loathe Facebook's interface. But by and large nearly all of my communication is by instant messenger, skype, email, phone, or some combination of the above.

And I basically live online since i work in a distributed team.

MaysonL• 15 years ago

So, is this merely a design fiction, or are there plans for this to actually exist and be available somewhere?

hm2k• 15 years ago

Their homepage is all image, no substance.

I'm guessing their product is the same.

iaskwhy• 15 years ago

I think a lot about this since email clients still seem like something done by a developer without wasting much time thinking about the user experience. For instance, I'd say most personal email conversations are between only two people and yet we still can't see it as the usual chat view which is much more easier to read, like shown on the video and the screenshots.

Please do it and keep improving it as there's a lot of potencial here. Good work!

rwmj• 15 years ago

Where is the analysis of how people already use email and how it fails? How is this going to improve the experience?

There are a ton of research areas for email/messaging, such as those below. This seems to address none of them.

- better searching

- multiple sources (email, SMS, RSS, twitter .. in one place)

- automatic classification of incoming email, flagging important items, separating personal and business etc

- integrating to-do lists

_urga3• 15 years ago

I am working on a web-based email client (https://ronomon.com) with offline access, instant boot, constant time search, and support for roughly four million emails. It takes some new approaches to threading, meta-discussions, multiple sources, attachments, and simple non-structured text to-do lists, and re-imagines the email client as a multiplayer rather than single-player tool. Could I let you know when it's ready?

mike-cardwell3• 15 years ago

Please let me know when this is ready. My contact details are in my profile. I love trying to break stuff like this, and I've managed to break lots of webmail and email clients in the past.

Derbasti11• 15 years ago

Funny, all of that is in Gmail. (if you count IM/Buzz/G+ integration as part of 'multiple sources')

farlington3• 15 years ago

It looks to me like it's going to improve the experience by making the experience more like facebook's messaging app. Most of my friends send messages via facebook rather than through email, because it's a better and more personal experience. Taking some of that experience to an email client is a killer idea.

Why do email clients have to take their cues from other email clients? They feel stuck in the 90s. Many people have replaced email with facebook for personal use—it only makes sense that email clients should go there.

adamtulinius• 15 years ago

It is weird how replying on the conversations tab makes the user write the reply above the original message.

krmmalik2• 15 years ago

Shame all the innovation in email clients seems to be happening predominantly on the Mac. Havent seen any Windows versions of any of these kind of apps.

I wonder if we'll ever see an iPad version of anything like this, because i'd certainly be interested. On a side note, this further cements the idea that its still worthwhile to disrupt boring or old markets if they havent had disruption for a long time.

Derbasti11• 15 years ago

Maybe this is because Windows is still predominantly a business market (except for games), where feature lists are more important than elegance or simplicity. Hence Outlook and its kin.

mattmanser2• 15 years ago

Kin? There's just outlook these days.

krmmalik2• 15 years ago

Perhaps. I dont really know either way, but its still a shame. If Windows 8 delivers on its HTML5/JS native experience promise, then that could change a lot of things in the future, since many developers could develop for the desktop and web platform simultaneously - Although knowing Microsoft maybe thats a little too ambitious.

wushupork• 15 years ago

It's because you can't just build this and expect large organizations to just use this even if they wanted. There's tons of things like compliance, certifications, internationalization support, accessibility features. You can't launch a "simple" barebones product.

Not to mention many companies for legal reasons have to host their content internally.

These concerns alone - not withstanding the long sales cycles of corporate sales turns off many startups.

gregschlom• 15 years ago

I'm working on a cross-platform desktop email client with some interesting features as well. It works on Windows, Linux, and Mac. I'm hoping to release a beta in a few weeks :)

chrischen• 15 years ago

Turn this into a web interface, allow some emails to be retrieved by the public, and you've got another facebook clone!

markokocic• 15 years ago

Seems like the concept of providing more "human" or "natural" interaction between user and computer is becoming more and more pervasive, and Persona is just another example about that.

I don't know what to think about it. As a casual user, I like it. It make interaction with the computer effortless. On the other side, as a power user, I still like to Unix philosophy of small powerfull tools and an easy ways to combine and automate them.

I really hope someone will eventually find a way to mix both of those concepts and bring software to the next level.

fingerprinter• 15 years ago

I like what he is saying and what they are showing, but email and particularly this type of email client will be all about the small touches. I just can't get a sense for something like this until I feel it for myself.

beaumartinez2• 15 years ago

I don't normally mind artsy but this is ridiculous. The video is zoomed, focused, and tilted to excess. Am I supposed to get a meaningful impression of it that way?

nateberkopec• 15 years ago

Yeah, someone's been watching way too many Google product videos and decided to turn it up to 11.

geraldalewis• 15 years ago

I was at a bar with a friend the other night, and he took a picture using a flash. I took one by holding very still so I could take a longer exposure without the flash. His image accurately recorded the scene in detail. Mine recorded the feel.

I think you're supposed to get an emotional impression, instead of an explicit idea of how the software works.

jacques_chester• 15 years ago

My emotional impression was that I couldn't see the bloody software. It was more like a wedding movie for the MacBooks than a product presentation.

geuis2• 15 years ago

1) Build it. Concept videos are nice and all, but its vaporware till people can use it.

2) I think most people these days have switched to webmail in one form or another. Build this as a web app, not a strict desktop client. Also, as a web app its relatively easy these days to wrap it in a framework that will present it as a desktop app if someone wants to use it that way.

rmc• 15 years ago

I think most people these days have switched to webmail in one form or another. Build this as a web app, not a strict desktop client.

The demo has it running on OSX. OSX users are more open to the idea of having (and paying for) a desktop application. From a business perspective, an OSX desktop application might make sense.

nhebb2• 15 years ago

2) I think most people these days have switched to webmail in one form or another

If you're interested in stats, Campaign Monitor posts a monthly report on email client popularity: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/stats/email-clients/

Also note the Movers and Shakers stats at the bottom.

ra• 15 years ago

That's a nice resource. Thanks!

danohuiginn• 15 years ago

There sure is a lot written about gmail, relative to its market share. apparently hotmail and yahoo mail are both more popular.

geuis2• 15 years ago

Thanks for the link. Its surprising to see that client email is actually so large!

jgrahamc• 15 years ago

I shall now deploy my catch phrase: Shut Up and Ship! (http://blog.jgc.org/2010/08/shut-up-and-ship.html) which I probably stole from Zawodny.

The concept video is very annoying because of the 'arty' way it's been filmed. They have shown three ideas: sort mail by sender, sort by conversation and show me all attachments. So far, so good. What they haven't mentioned is any form of search functionality or foldering. Looking at my inbox right now I see a set of separate conversations from different people about the same topic (in this case, OSCON). What you want to get on top of email is automatic foldering (pet topic) so that you get an intelligent view of your email.

What's shown in the video seems to be pretty basic wrapped up in a flowery dress to make it look like something amazing. I can believe that people would appreciate clean email interfaces, but this seems like it doesn't take into account real world stuff like figuring out who's cc:ed on a message or what the subject line is, or what happens when an exchange of messages stops being between two people and starts being between three or more.

Derbasti11• 15 years ago

Which is to say, it does not match your style of interacting with email. Many Gmail users out there (Facebook mail, even?) are using email very differently and programs like this (Sparrow, Lion Mail) are catering for them.

Personally, I don't ever use folders. I've been there, and I'm glad I got it over with. I have no use whatsoever for Outlook-like complexity and complex rule sets. And please don't think that this is just because I don't deal with email a lot. But there are different kinds of people who use email in different ways. To each his own.

wyclif• 15 years ago

What is the best material you've read on why folders in email are inefficient? Do you have a blog post, paper, &c. that would be good reading on this subject?

follower• 15 years ago

> about the same topic (in this case, OSCON).

OT: I wonder if there's enough HN people at OSCON to have a get-together/BoF of some sort? I'm up there for the week workshopping/presenting about Arduino & Android fun...

mahrain• 15 years ago

Finally a client that merges / blurs the line between my email conversations and my IM conversations. I like to have a Skype open as a continuous conversation with people, like a link dump or easy way to share files. This seems to do the same for email. Great.

webmonkeyuk• 15 years ago

Sorry, I fell asleep somewhere about 10 seconds into the video when the dreary voice and dreamy music started

smickie• 15 years ago

Attachment view is one innovation that stands out, abstracting attachments from emails to allow independent file-system like browsing of them would be great.

This client might be a little late to the party in terms of clean UI as something new, what with Mail 5 coming out soon, Sparrow (assuming your a desktop mail kind of person).

On a side note, that whole webpage as an image is making my skin crawl.

mbrzuzy• 15 years ago

I couldn't really tell much about it with all the images being shown from a side perspective.

soofaloofa• 15 years ago

Auto playing the video is a complete turn-off for me.

frazerb• 15 years ago

I used NEO from Caelo (nelsons email organiser) for five years+ [[ employer INSISTED on using freakin' Msft and Outlook ]]. NEO is an overlay (non-invasive) on top of Outlook that does all this and more - free text search etc. NEO saved me an hour a week at least. [[ No personal relationship with Caelo I just think NEO is awesome. ]]

brown9-22• 15 years ago

I must be one of the only people out there who thinks that the experience of sending/receiving emails in Gmail and/or Outlook is just fine today, thanks.

rglover• 15 years ago

Why isn't this being developed? The design looks great, but like many are saying...a concept is only the halfway point. The video sold me, but it'd be nice if I could at least sign up for a beta invite or something. Seeing "concept" all over the page left me a bit hopeless of ever using the product.

pnathan• 15 years ago

it's about time new views were tossed around about email.

Every email client I've used looks like a clone from Netscape Communicator.

IanDrake• 15 years ago

So true. I'm surprised at the level of indignation in the comments here. I think there's room to make email better for different groups of users and I think this might be a good start.

tluyben2• 15 years ago

WHAT IS THAT MUSIC? :( I just stuck a fork in my ear!! Thanks man. Or, in other words, if you make a video, don't distract people by giving them suicide feelings!

jessedhillon• 15 years ago

A person could (easily?) build this using context.io (http://context.io)

grgg• 15 years ago

The "minimalistic" email compose window will baffle and annoy anyone not in the "focus mode" Lifehack community. It does not look user friendly at all. To my knowledge, writing email in a window with a subject field and a send button was not causing anyone friction. I don't think the world is ready or looking for windows with unlabeled fields and hidden buttons.

micheljansen• 15 years ago

For a concept based on "a critical analysis of how people manage their emails and use their email clients" it contains an awful lot of design flaws.

The general workflow is pretty cool; different view modes, conversations etc. but then I see how the mother writes an email in the video (between 0:35 and 0:55) and I am surprised she can figure anything out.

The email pane is an intimidating white modal window, that does not give any visual cues as to what you can do with it. How can I drag it? Can I type anywhere? How do I send or dismiss it? To whom will it be sent?

Apparently messages have a subject (at least they are still email), but this is implicit. Having taught some older people how to use email, I know they struggle a lot with the concept of having a subject and they often confuse message and subject. With this subject, I am pretty sure the average "mom" will end up sending every message with the subject "Dear David" or something like that.

The sequence is concluded by the woman sending the email (around 0:53). She moves the mouse to the bottom of the message and all of a sudden a fucking tool bar pops up out of nowhere. There is no indication that that thing was even there, so how is anyone going to know that was there to begin with?

Don't get me wrong, there is a lot that can be improved about the way we interact with email, and there are a lot of things in this concept that I really like (for example the contact-list on the left, allowing you to drop a photo on a person's face to send it to them), but they introduce new flaws that are unacceptable. The footer of the page says the authors are from the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, so I would have expected that rather than spending a lot of time on creating a sexy video (mission accomplished) they had put their concept to the test with some actual users. No doubt these flaws would have come to light immediately.

akrymski• 15 years ago

Interesting demo video. We've actually built something along those lines: www.post.fm

Persona - A concept email client

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